Last night's bus was returning to depot empty. I think these guys would be among Australia's most experienced artic drivers, some of them doing it for 20 years or more. These buses are pushers (rear engine driving rear wheels).

Oops! Doesn't matter whether there are passengers on board, other motorists / pedestrians are at risk. In this era of data loggers, I would be surprised if any driver would be foolish enough to do so though.

tonyp wrote:My experience on deckers on two continents over the decades and including the new B Line is that they're always slow to move along. Electric deckers are a lot better though.

I would say over all its line ball, down to the power of the individual model, a decker is certainly a fare bit lighter.

Linto63 wrote:Doesn't matter whether there are passengers on board, other motorists / pedestrians are at risk. In this era of data loggers, I would be surprised if any driver would be foolish enough to do so though.I would say over all its line ball, down to the power of the individual model, a decker is certainly a fare bit lighter.

There was no exceeding of speed limits or speed advisorys involved so I don't see what the problem is. It shows that an artic can be driven like an ordinary rigid single-deck bus, whereas a double decker has to take into account the laws of gravity. They may be OK in a straight line (as long as no sudden change of steering angle is involved and that should be taken into account), but they have to slow right down on curves. These things affect the service speed.

I have been in Singapore for over one week, travelling on as many different types/configurations of buses as possible - after I return home I will put together some information about the varoius buses in an (hopefully) unbiased series of comments. Singapore is interesting for transport in general, and buses in particular as contracted urban buses number approximately 5,500 of which nearly 2,200 are double deckers. I am not sure of the number of artics on the road at present, but within a couple of years their numbers will dwindle to 40.

Singapore has a lot of full low floor buses and I will put some information about that, a little later - I do believe there are pluses with low-floors, but there are some negatives as well.

I am sure that you all know that there is some wonderful equipment here, including over 1,000 Mercedes Benz Citaros, and they are great machines. On the double decker side, there are over 1,400 Volvo/Wright Geminis in service - so why would you not want to visit this place?????

Tim Williams wrote:I have been in Singapore for over one week, travelling on as many different types/configurations of buses as possible - after I return home I will put together some information about the varoius buses in an (hopefully) unbiased series of comments. Singapore is interesting for transport in general, and buses in particular as contracted urban buses number approximately 5,500 of which nearly 2,200 are double deckers. I am not sure of the number of artics on the road at present, but within a couple of years their numbers will dwindle to 40.

Singapore has a lot of full low floor buses and I will put some information about that, a little later - I do believe there are pluses with low-floors, but there are some negatives as well.

I am sure that you all know that there is some wonderful equipment here, including over 1,000 Mercedes Benz Citaros, and they are great machines. On the double decker side, there are over 1,400 Volvo/Wright Geminis in service - so why would you not want to visit this place?????

I look forward to reading your observations Tim. Linto63 has already given me information on fleet propertions in Singapore and it seems, from your information too, that double decks constitute about 42% or so of the fleet. Now, cities like Prague and Vienna previously mentioned, have about 45-50% artics in their fleets, yet I haven't seen them described as "artic cities". On a consistent basis, therefore I wouldn't describe Singapore as a double deck city, even though they're obviously very significant as a mainstream bus - it's just as much a decker city as Vienna and Prague are artic cities. It still seems to me that the UK, Ireland and Hong Kong are the only surviving large jurisdictions where deckers are overwhelmingly the mainstay of city transit fleets.

I've been reading all sorts of information from everywhere since we last wrote and I'm darned if I can find anywhere else in the world on this scale, but on the other hand a lot of systems that have got rid of deckers since the war and numbers that have since acquired some in small numbers for targetted niches of their overall operation, but not as their mainstream vehicle type. I still maintain the assertion that deckers have failed to take off seriously as city transit vehicles but have remained in a holding pattern comprising the few cities/countries that traditionally continue their use and a continuing niche output of very small numbers relative to the overall world production of city buses, including a very much larger number of artics.

I've also been reading up on the history of deckers in Sydney, drawing on both Greg Travers' work and my father's work as an engineer involved in both double deckers and the new post-war single deckers in Sydney. As you probably know, there was a big uptake of deckers on British chassis/local bodies in Sydney from the 1930s. These mostly worked in a support role to the trams as feeders or on routes where there wasn't a tram or rail service. They seemed to do the work quite decently for a time, until the overturns started occurring and there were a number of these right up to the 1970s.

My dad's first job was with stability testing and the outcome was some constraints on drivers and a reduction in service speed. However, two particularly bad accidents in the late 1940s caused a complete rethink and embracing of the American single-decker bus design (I think similar happened in Adelaide), which my dad was also involved in adapting the design to Sydney and the British chassis that were to be used. Both of these accidents were on Manly-Warringah long-distance services. One involved an overturn of a fully-loaded (70 passengers including standees) peak service with very many injuries. The other was off-peak but overturned on a hill and went over a cliff upside down, resulting in several deaths and many injuries. Those incidents sounded the death knell for deckers in Sydney and there were no more orders, the last deckers entering service in 1955 iirc and the remaining chassis already delivered being bodied as single deckers.

The next venture into deckers was the Atlanteans in the 1970s which resulted from a desire to provide more seats on long-distance services and thus economise on the number of buses required for such services. The union, as is known, did that one in as they were not prepared to operate them without a conductor. Then they got caught up in the door disputes that came with OMO, building up to a head in the 1970s and early 80s. Basically, all OMO buses including the Atlanteans were only allowed by the union to use the front door only and it was not until the 80s that a second door was allowed to open for exit only. The artics, which were introduced as the higher-seating solution after the Atlanteans, also suffered from this, either being ordered with only two doors or, when fitted with three, only being able to open two of them (I think that might still apply in Sydney?).

In recent times, the Premier when she was transport minister announced the reintroduction of deckers for long-distance routes only where there was low passenger turnover en route and this is the way it has happened to date. The current Minister Constance is now saying ambiguous things that differ from that, implying the end of artics and so on, and it remains to be seen which way this will head. Knowing the way these things work internally, I assume there are the usual warring camps within TfNSW and the RMS has probably been nagging about the "road space" taken up by buses at the cost of their precious private cars. Anyway, this is a sort of potted history in Sydney.

I will look into this in detail after I am back in dear old Adelaide! I am also trying to take photos of the low floor, rear floor areas of the buses and will put it altogether. It is interesting that no matter how good a transport system is, in the end the passenger experience comes down to the quality of the bus driver/operator and this afternoon here, I came across one of the worst - the driver's braking was so violent, a poor old lady screamed in panic, as she was propelled off her seat. All very unneccessary because the driver was travelling way too fast and he didn't anticipate a traffic light change, with a young boy just about to cross the road.

I will look into this in detail after I am back in dear old Adelaide! I am also trying to take photos of the low floor, rear floor areas of the buses and will put it altogether. It is interesting that no matter how good a transport system is, in the end the passenger experience comes down to the quality of the bus driver/operator and this afternoon here, I came across one of the worst - the driver's braking was so violent, a poor old lady screamed in panic, as she was propelled off her seat. All very unneccessary because the driver was travelling way too fast and he didn't anticipate a traffic light change, with a young boy just about to cross the road.

Have a good trip back Tim. I've been to Singapore once, but too tropical for me. I'm not a person who likes humidity, I can't stand anywhere north of Wollongong!

I have taken interior photos of various full low floor bus types in Singapore, will post with some notes, when I get some time, hopefully this week. After various discussions on full low floor types and DD's v.s Artics etc., I found that this added an extra dimension to the bus riding in Singapore. I will put down my thoughts (without any hard and fast conclusions) when I post the photos - all very interesting to me!